Having worked overseas for the last decade going back n forth...

Having worked overseas for the last decade going back n forth between Australia, there is no doubt there is significant racial prejudice in Australia establishment against China and Chinese origin. In US they call this "institutional racism", where racism is subtle and the person is not even aware of their own bias, e.g. recruiters unconsciously favouring job applicants with "white names" rather than "black names". Think of a few years ago the national rage that China was buying Aussie farmland, later the facts came out they own less than 1%, with majority foreign ownership by UK and US, even Singapore had higher %. What caused this is ignorance and fear, the two root cause of racism.

I wouldn't take the Government's phrase "national interest" as a matter of fact, all governments in the world fall back on the phrase "national interest" when they don't want the public to question. There can be no debate on any topic that is "national interest", autocratic governments love this phrase. A few months ago I was sitting in a board meeting in Sydney and believe it or not people from ASIO came telling us not to make any positive statements to media regarding Chinese investments, because one of the BOD did an interview praising the benefit of Chinese investment for one our major JV.